Unusual Venues of Edinburgh - The Rowantree

The Rowantree is an intimate and atmospheric cavernous venue nestled in the depths of the 18th century South Bridge in the heart of the Old Town, and a stone’s throw from the famous Royal Mile.

The Rowantree, was originally home to the renowned Lucky Middlemiss Tavern, an oyster tavern of the Scottish Enlightenment era that saw literary greats and Enlightenment figures throng the watering hole. James Hutton, Robert Burns, David Hume, Adam Smith, Deacon Brodie, Watt and Benjamin Franklin were just some of the regulars, with Robert Louis Stevenson once describing it as “a rabbit warren not only by the numbers of its twist and turns, but by its dark stairs frequented by loiterers and such other such low characters and as treacherous a place as I saw.”

The information on the above venue is provided only for location purposes.